Letter from Espargal: 49 of 2011

Friday: As we set out on a walk this morning, another Garden of Eden morning, I stopped to take a picture in the park with the sunlight slanting down through the trees. The dogs had gone ahead to the gate at the top, where they wait for a biscuit. Jones had paused to put on the washing and feed the cats in Casa Nada. There was hardly a breath of wind; the day required only the lightest of jumpers and I thought, as often before, that Adam and Eve must have first beheld paradise on such a day as this.

Slavic arrived mid-morning to continue his tasks about the garden. Following his wall building exercises, he has been creating a series of stone steps at awkward spots on the property. Next on his list is raising and paving a small walled terrace in front of the house to create additional visitor’s parking. It was Jones’s suggestion, a good one like many (although not necessarily all) of her suggestions. I shouldn’t want her to quote me.

She has been writing thank-you cards to the neighbours who exchanged Christmas gifts with us. On Christmas Day itself we were guests of Marie and Olly, who did us proud. They always decorate their living room to match the occasion. This pleases Jones greatly as it gives her a feel of the Christmas spirit that I fear I fail to inspire at home.

BENAFIM - ACROSS THE VALLEY

We’ve been up to Benafim to recycle the tins and plastic, take morning coffee with Celso and Brigitte at the Coral, nip into the pharmacist to top up on pills, pause at the cash machine to withdraw funds and stop at the grocer for a few odds and ends. We return via the narrow agricultural road through the valley with Russ peering out of one rear window and Prickles through the other. Little is happening there right now, other than a little pruning of vines. It’s too dry and there’s no sign of rain.

A FASHION-CONSCIOUS MAN

A Christmas gift that I awarded myself was a fine body warmer (gilet) that I had admired at the Cortefiel store in Faro a few weeks back – as reported – but was too small for me. Jones persuaded me to wait until after Christmas before securing a larger size from the Guia branch of the shop in order to benefit from the after-Christmas sales. The sales were well underway when we arrived there but sadly the garment wasn’t on them. So I paid the full price. I’m delighted with my purchase nonetheless. The gilet is reversible, brown on one side and blue on the other, with double sets of pockets – just the thing for the fashion-conscious man.

It’s been a sociable week, one way and another, out with our widows, lunching with friends and taking tea with neighbours. (Neighbours and friends overlap, neighbours being the ones who live closer to us.) Social affairs, the arrangement thereof, fall within Jones’s domain, a gender arrangement which would appear to be common among our acquaintance and which suits me very well. Her duties further include washing, cleaning, the kitchen, the garden, watering, cats and strays, phone conversations and one or two other minor tasks. Needless to say, I have my own responsibilities.

What I am sharing with her is an end-of-year cold. This began as a tickle in my right nostril midweek and rapidly and noisily enveloped the rest of me – and then her. Whereas Jones suffers her colds in silence, mine are of the explosive variety, a sort of malady performance-art that rips holes in the toughest tissue.

My wife suspects that my sneezes are, well, unnecessarily demonstrative, and wonders whether I couldn’t contain them a little. The answer is that I couldn’t. That men suffer worse colds than women is well established. A female friend of ours refers to such afflictions endured by her husband as “man-colds”, seemingly infinitely worse than anything she has ever caught. He has my sympathies. Our wives sometimes fail to understand what we men have to bear.

Barbara is off this coming week to spend several days at the newly-acquired London home of her brother, Llewellyn, and his wife, Lucia. I look forward to hearing more and to seeing the pictures in due course.

A break there to check the Friday night Euromillions results. ….. No, not his week. Never mind, there’ll be another draw next Friday and yet another the week after. Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

There is some good news to report. My mobile phone is talking once again to my router. Llewellyn suggested various restorative actions that I could take to renew their relationship, one of which eventually did the trick. It’s lovely when technology works. It’s especially lovely when it works after a period of not working.

The same is true for the car’s air conditioner. The car is booked into Honda again this coming week after the AC crashed yet again. But it was back on yesterday and functioned again today. Fingers crossed.

I have decided that it was probably a mistake to think that I could learn German, especially from a book (although it does have an accompanying cassette). I now have German verbs drifting insistently through my dreams, looking for their companion nouns. German grammar, I regret to say, doesn’t really make much sense – except possibly to the Germans themselves. Barbara has always said that life is too short to learn German (which she took briefly) and now I know why.

To console myself, I’ve ordered two books from Amazon that she will hopefully bring back from London, a relaxing theological tome ( A Layman’s Theology, recommended by Martin Winter) and Mark Forsyth’s Etymologicon, described as a Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language. I heard readings from the book on the BBC and was instantly won over.

There, my page is done.

Happy New Year!

Letter from Espargal: 48 of 2011

We are on the cusp of mid-winter (whatever that is; I always wanted to write that we are on the cusp of something or other). Today marks the solstice. You would never know this were you here for we are basking in balmy sunshine at a temperature of C21*. Fellows were idling around in t-shirts at the Apolonia supermarket in Almancil, where we’ve just taken Olive for a basket of shopping and a cuppa. The met office tells us that this has been the 3rd warmest Portuguese autumn on record. Apart from the implications for Iberia’s climatic future, whatever they may be, it’s quite pleasant.

Slavic and I have been exploiting the fine weather by building rock walls. Slavic is Natasha’s partner and a 20-something Ukrainian. He’s a builder by trade, strong, skilful and hard-working. His Portuguese is sufficient for his needs although nothing like as fluent as Natasha’s. He rides with me on the tractor down into the bushveld beyond the village where we load up rocks. I drive the tractor and Slavic loads the rocks. We choose the holeiest, gnarledest ones for the best effect. Espargal is one of the rockiest places on earth. It’s really just a light scattering of earth and vegetation on a mountain of rock.

Slavic’s first job was to build a series of sloping walls on three sides of the solar-panel base, with lots of gaps for succulents. On the fourth side he built rough stone stairs to enable me to get up and take readings. Once we’ve gathered the materials and I’ve explained what I want, I leave him to get on with the job. The results are even better than I’d hoped for and I’ve spent a couple of hours since filling gaps with suitable plants, ones that can cope with dry conditions and little sunlight as they will live in the shade of the panels.

The next task was to line the bank at the bottom of the property with rocks, both for aesthetic reasons (it looks lovely, as you can see) and to support the bank; the narrow path above it was wearing away. I’ve half a dozen more such ventures in mind. This suits Slavic well; his main employer now requires his services only one or two days a week, a reflection of the hard times that Portugal is enduring.

Have you been following the Leveson inquiry in the UK into the behaviour of the tabloid press, I wonder. It presents one with an excellent opportunity to watch some relatively junior people telling unsavoury truths while their big bosses deny all knowledge of them.

For my part, I have finished Lance Price’s excellent tome on the relationships between Downing Street and the UK media. And I’m up to page 10 or thereabouts on German for Dummies.

The title is a misnomer. It’s clear to me already that no dummy would ever learn a language whose adjectives mutate for number, gender and case. It’s hard to understand how the Germans manage to communicate at all, except in English that is, which most of them seem to speak fluently. That’s judging by the number who have been talking in excellent English on radio and TV about the woes of the euro. The euro’s another story, mind you, and not a suitable subject for a letter on the eve of Christmas.

I shall not tarry on Christmas. It is not my favourite time of year, being neither fish nor fowl. (One hardly knows whether to carol or to carouse.) But the topic gives me an opportunity to say thank you to the many considerate people who have sent us Christmas greetings and who haven’t yet had the same from us. I even received a very kind bottle of something (I hope it’s kindly intended - it’s still wrapped) from the lottery syndicate, along with a note saying how nice it would be if we had a win. If only! My fear is that we’ll win the jackpot when I’m 85 and can’t remember my middle name.

For a couple of years now I’ve been part of an emailing group of ex-Marist Brothers, the religious order with which I spent a decade of my life. For the last few weeks we’ve been discussing the epidemic of child abuse that has emerged in recent times. Some of the personal revelations have been deep and touching. Most of us were too innocent for our own good. Not all, mind you; several of our company went to jail for their failings in this regard. I reflect often on that period in my life. It’s as though it was lived by a twin rather than myself.

My smart-phone is giving me grief. (Barbara doubts there’s any such thing as a smart-phone and I can understand why.) It’s refusing to communicate with the router. The only recent change it’s undergone is being mated via blue-tooth with the car’s comms although I had no problems for a couple of days thereafter. I suspect that it will have to go back to the workshop as it did once before. On that occasion, it underwent a major transplant. I’ll wait till the New Year as I’d hate to be without it over the holiday doldrums. It’s still picking up my emails and will link to the internet via the masts albeit much more slowly.

An insect has come to live with us. At least I think it’s an insect – a stick insect of some kind; I’ve never seen the likes. (Last time I wrote about a bug, someone pointed out to me that it was an arachnid and not an insect.) This little fellow – just over an inch in length - has attached himself to a gate post for most of the month.

Barbara cleverly adjusted the camera to take these fine close-up shots. We’ve done our best not to disturb him as we pass through the gate, not that he’s got a great future there.

Raymond is jogging my elbow to indicate that it’s time to go walking. He’s right. Half an hour to sundown. Happy Christmas.

Letter from Espargal: 47 of 2011

This week we did something that we haven’t done for some time. We took a bus. In fact, we took three buses, reflecting as we did that this was how the other half lives. We found the experience quite tolerable. The hard bit was the waiting – and even that we bore well enough.

The occasion was the return of our car to Honda for further exploration of the problems afflicting the air-conditioning. I had the car in last month, when Honda topped up the gas in the AC and said all was well. Well, it wasn’t, not for more than a day or two. This time they managed to get the unit working again but without discerning what was upsetting it. Fortunately, it’s nigh on mid-winter and we don’t need to be air conditioned, except occasionally in the bedroom at night to discourage the odd remaining mosquito – I’m not joking. Mid December and the little buggers are still about.

So, having dropped the car with Honda on Thursday morning, we were delivered to the Algarve Forum by the courtesy bus to wile away the hours. In one of the smarter stores I found a waistcoat that I really liked but I couldn’t make it fit, even after trying it a second time and then fetching Jones to for confirmation. No, she said, it’s definitely too small. The store said their sister branch half an hour away had a larger size in stock; Jones says we should wait until New Year when it’s bound to be on sale. Stay tuned!

With time to kill we had to choose between Mission Impossible at the cinema upstairs and Faro Beach. Jones opted for the Beach and that was fine by me. Thus we found ourselves waiting at the bus-stop with a bunch of students and cleaning ladies. Our bus took an age. From the terminus we made our way across the bridge to the “Electrico” (tram) café, a favourite, where we dined al fresco in the gentle sunshine on red wine and ham & cheese sandwiches.

Across the road were parked two of the hundreds of motoring homes that migrate south from northern Europe to over-winter in Portugal. We wondered what it would be like to live in one. To be honest, it didn’t really appeal. They’re nothing like the vast American RVs.

Then back by bus to the Algarve Forum, whence yet another bus took us on to Honda. There, Leila, the charming young receptionist, explained the position with the AC, and asked me to keep an eye on it. I will.

Her colleague, Paulo, then assisted me to reconnect my mobile phone to the “hands off” telecoms equipment in the car. The female Honda computer, with her cut-glass English, struggled to understand his accent. (She barely understands mine.) None the less, he got the job done – and very timely too. En route home we had a call from Olive to say that the trenchant complaint letter that I’d written on her behalf to M&G Securities had brought an immediate and pleasing response.

Speaking of Olive, we took her along on Wednesday to Guia, a superstore complex 30 minutes away where the UK grocery chain, Iceland, has recently opened a shop to great fanfare. It specialises in the treats - most of them in English packages with their sterling prices still visible - that British expats don’t find in Portuguese supermarkets. To our surprise, virtually all the staff appeared to be English. We returned with a goodly supply of English beers and mince pies. Portugal doesn’t lack for outlets and shopping centres of every complexion. What it lacks is citizens earning money to spend in them.

On Tuesday evening we went along to see “The Debt”, a film that had been well-written up. I usually take my lead from the “Rotten Tomatoes” site that gives one a taste of multiple reviews. The film concerns three Mossad operatives involved in a mission to kidnap a Nazi war criminal. I don’t think that for those who haven’t seen it, I’m giving anything away. What I would say is that it’s worth doing more research than we did. This is not one for the squeamish. Jones, who likes happy endings, was in two minds at the interval about whether to stay. She did – to see how it turned out, she said. It certainly wasn’t predictable.

Let me talk for a moment about our weather, if only because we’ve taken so many spectacular pictures. Most mornings we’ve woken either to mist or cloud seeping through the valley. It’s almost been like looking down on a vast lake, lapping at the feet of the houses in lower Espargal and submerging the nether fringes of Benafim on the far side of the valley.

With the mist has come heavy dew that’s rendered morning walks hazardous, especially behind those two tugging pups of ours. Several times we’ve waited until midday, when the hill has dried somewhat, before setting out on our daily walk. Even so, the hounds insist on being entertained in the park for at least half an hour morning and evening.

After much endeavour we managed to register ourselves with an online UK grocery chain with a view to sending a welcome pack to (Barbara’s brother) Llewellyn and Lucia, who spent Friday moving into their new London home. The problem was our foreign address and phone numbers, which took some getting around. We were pleased to hear that the pack arrived safely and promptly.

JONESY IN THE PARK

Also just moved is Chris Jones (& co), Barbara’s nephew, who has taken possession of a palatial house in Squamish, north of Vancouver, or so it seems from the pictures. We spent a couple of hours in the town three years ago during a visit to the nearby Whistler resort. Nice part of the world.

I have decided to learn a little German, with the emphasis on “little”. For years we’ve been visiting our family in Germany without being able to say more than hello and "another beer please". For this I blame our relatives, who coddle us. In fact we just trail along in their wake. Uncomfortable with the depths of my ignorance, I have invested in German for Dummies. Wiedersehen!

Letter from Espargal: 46 of 2011

This week nothing has happened. That’s to say, nothing has happened that springs to mind. So let me justify my existence with a few pictures while I think. Here’s one of Maggie, a neighbour’s unfortunate bitch - “unfortunate” because, like her son on the other side of the property, she spends her life at the end of a chain, with a barrel for a home. We tell ourselves that Maggie knows nothing else and, expecting nothing better, may be content. But we’re not really convinced.

And here’s her fat little pup, whom Jones has christened Barry (because he lives in a barrel). He’s doing okay, probably because he has all Maggie’s teats to himself, along with a corner of the barrel and a bit of the old car-seat cover and sack that Jones has thrust into it. The owner is actually a pleasant old fellow. He presented Jonesy with a small bottle of baggy the other day, as she passed by. It’s just that, like much of the older Portuguese generation, he doesn’t share our views on keeping dogs.

We’ve been thinking lots about where to go next spring when our house-sitters will be down again. I’ve spent long hours on the computer researching possibilities. We quite fancied a voyage up the Norwegian coast (with Hurtigruten) on a ferry serving coastal communities until we realised that the reasonable-looking fares doubled when passengers opted for full board.

Twelve meals - six lunches and suppers - cost an additional $1500 dollars per person, would you believe it? – and that’s before drinks. Reviews from previous ferry passengers warned readers to be ready for to pay £8 for a glass of wine. I should be driven to sobriety!

Equally attractive (and nearly as pricey) was a canal and lake cruise across Sweden (see the “Gota Canal”). We were tempted until we noted that none of the cabins on the old boats plying the route offered toilets en suite. Nipping along the deck to a communal loo at 02.00 in freezing temps somehow doesn’t appeal, especially as neither of us is wild about pyjamas.

Last weekend we visited the annual Loule Christmas fair, an event we always enjoy even though it’s always much the same. We like to arrive early to beat the crowds to the kiosks serving supper. Ham and cheese sandwiches, a bottle of wine and the usual (bread, olive and cheese) hors d’oeuvres served us well.

When we came to pay, the delightful and disorganised young lady who was serving us hauled out her pencil to tot up the bill; she made it to be just over 11 euros. Given that the wine alone cost 10 euros, I raised my doubts. She tried again; was it 19 euros she wondered. (No, it was closer to 22, which we happily paid.) A child of the electronic age, she didn’t have her calculator and had never been drilled in mental arithmetic and “times tables”. (I can still do them up to 13 x 13 – well, most days.)

LOTS OF JONES SKIES

Monday I nipped into the Land Registry in Loule to fetch our updated title-deeds. The clerk declined to give them to me, saying she needed the receipt which, it emerged from a phone call, was with our lawyer. The latter emailed it to me overnight, assuring me that I didn’t require the original (as the clerk had insisted).

Tuesday we tried again. The clerk at first rejected my print-out but - when I relayed the lawyer’s advice - went to consult her boss and finally delivered the goods with good grace. In the new Portugal, one doesn’t actually get the title-deeds. One gets a code to key into the Registry website, from which one can then print out document. This code, the lawyer’s secretary informed me, holds for a year. Thereafter, one has to pay €15 for another year’s access. The bottom line is that the Portuguese government is desperate to raise cash by any means it can.

DRIES'S PIGEONS CIRCLING

One of those means is imposing tolls on various formerly free-to-use highways including East-West Algarve highway linking us to Spain, the A22. After months of controversy and confusion, the government announced that the tolls would come into force this week. Because the A22 was constructed without toll booths at on- and off-ramps, cameras have been erected on overhead gantries to record the passage of vehicles.

ZEFERINO'S CAT - ANOTHER JONES ASSIST

Motorists using the new toll-roads are required to register their vehicles with the central toll authorities and to install a small transponder. We got ours months ago, fortunately, because last minute demand has ensured that these devices are currently unobtainable. The implications for those lacking transponders, as well as for foreign-registered cars and the hire-car industry, have yet to be spelled out.

Wednesday afternoon, Natasha joined me in the park, clearing up and burning off the prunings. From there we set out for Vitor’s workshop in the hope of finding Natasha’s car serviceable. The good news was that the faulty starter motor had been replaced with a reconditioned unit. The bad news was that Vitor couldn’t trace the fault that was rendering the car so lackadaisical. Computer tests showed that there was an electronic problem, he said, but he lacked the equipment to be more specific.

He suggested that Natasha take the car into Nissan but advised her to get a quote before requesting any work. For if the problem lay with the central computer, as it might, she was likely to face a 4-figure bill.

If my train of thought appears a little jumpy, it may be because of the enormous bowl of pumpkin soup that Jones gave me for lunch; as a result I keep on having to hop up from my desk. So full was the bowl that she had to tiptoe through from the kitchen with the soup lapping at her fingers on the brim. I’m not complaining; it was excellent soup. The pumpkins/squashes – a whole box of them – came from an ever-generous farmer neighbour.

THE BAKER ARRIVES

Thursday was a public holiday, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. (I find this one of the church’s more puzzling dogmas but that’s another story.) It is likely to be scrapped next year, the holiday that is, as one of the sacrifices that the government is demanding to boost productivity. The church in Portugal has acknowledged that this is an instance when the affairs of mammon might legitimately take precedence over those of heaven.

LIFE IS GOOD

Friday: We’re just back from banking and widow duty. On the way home we got pulled over by traffic police doing routine checks. They were happy with our documents and after a cursory inspection, sent us on our way. What we didn’t mention and what they didn’t notice through the darkened rear door windows, were three dogs stretched out on the back seat. This was lucky as there are painful fines for carrying unsecured objects – including one’s pets – in the back of the car.

Letter from Espargal: 45 of 2011

The week has run away with us. When I looked up, it was December, which has come as a bit of a shock. It means that 2012 is just around the corner and I’m still coming to terms to 2011.

Mondays brings English class and widows. Here you see me seated among my pupils. You will understand why it’s called the Senior University although, in truth, it’s rather more senior than university. That’s by the by. The atmosphere is very pleasant, I learn a lot of Portuguese and there are no exams. What more could you ask?

On Tuesday we went to the ballet. This is not something that we do very often – about once a decade I guess. But since the Russian Ballet was coming to Faro, and with notions of the Bolshoi and Nureyev, I thought we ought to go, especially as the ballet concerned was Swan Lake and the music is heavenly. Tickets were a reasonable €25 euros each, although this is considered expensive in these parts. I managed to secure two from the half dozen that were left.

As it happened, Jonesy had taken a black dress into the Russian dressmaker in Loule to be shortened. Her plan was to wear it with some black tights that she recently acquired in Berlin and tall boots. It was, she understood, the latest fashion. Very smart she looked too; but so different to the Jones I knew that I started laughing. My amusement so unnerved her that she put on a long black coat that entirely hid her fashionable attire.

As to the ballet (not the Bolshoi), it was – like the curate’s egg – good in parts; in fact, very good in parts. The lead ballerina was excellent but her leading man (?) was a bit in awe of his own (admittedly spectacular) physique and jealous of the thunderous applause that went to the lady. This spurred him on to leap ever higher – to little avail. The corps de ballet could probably have done with a bit more practice. We reflected that it’s a long way from adequate to excellent.

ANOTHER JONES SKY

On a Wednesday, Natasha comes to clean. For months she has struggled with a severely underperforming car. Vitor, the local mechanic, thought he could do something about it; we had arranged for Natasha to leave the car at his workshop, where I would fetch her. That was the plan.

No sooner had I arrived at the workshop than Natasha called from Loule to say that the car wouldn’t start. While she waited for a tow-truck, I returned home to give Natalia (another Russian) her usual Wednesday morning English lesson. Then I went to fetch Natasha from the workshop. There, Vitor reported that the starter motor needed repairing or replacing and that (since Thursday was a public holiday) the car wouldn’t be ready until Friday at the earliest.

NOT THE UPRIGHT ONE - THE OTHER ONE
Wednesday evening we took ourselves to supper at the local, where our group included commuting Irish neighbours who are having an upper floor added to their house in the village. The house is located at the top of a steep property. The builders had been unloading materials from a tractor parked on the driveway when the vehicle suddenly took off.

One of the workers tried – and failed – to stop it. He was lucky not to injure himself. Fortunately, instead of heading down the drive (to career across the road and into the neighbours’ kitchen) the tractor had veered off, crashed through a fence and come to rest against a tree where, at the time of writing, it awaits rescue. It will have to be lifted out – no easy task, as the angle is acute and the ground is soft.

Vitor was telling me that another neighbour had an even luckier escape when his tractor slid off a steep, muddy track and hurtled down a rocky bank into the field below.

Thursday was May’s 81st birthday, an occasion that we celebrated at the Calypso in Loule with May, David and Dagmar.

May, a former neighbour in Cruz da Assumada, lost her husband just over a year ago. We see her each week for a meal and Barbara often takes her shopping while I’m giving my English lesson. As it happens, she had fallen over her cat a day or two earlier and was feeling very tender; but not so tender that she didn’t enjoy her lunch.

We noted with pleasure that the restaurant was doing good business and that most of the customers were Portuguese. Restaurants have been hard hit by the financial crisis and are going to be harder hit in the New Year when the VAT on meals rises from 6% to 23%. The VAT on electricity has already been raised by the same amount and it hurts. My only consolation is that the EDP is now paying me more for the electricity it buys from me than vice versa.

The photos that I took last week of the cobbler and his wife, I delivered this week to their little shop, along with a leather cushion that Mary had chewed a hole in. The cobbler seemed pleased. He’s a man of few words though and, after telling me that the cushion would be ready the following day, returned to the boot he was repairing on his last.

THE LUCKY ONES

Jones has been much concerned with the bitch of a Portuguese neighbour who (the bitch) lives in a barrel, attached to a long chain. She has recently had pups, one of which remains with her. (We have not asked what happened to the rest.) As a gesture to her state, her owner thrust some old jeans into the barrel as bedding. But these get dragged out again by the chain.

Barbara, who passes the bitch each evening (en route to feed a stray at the bottom of the village) has long been tossing her a few biscuits and has won her confidence. After seeing the poor dog shivering one cold evening, she took an old sack down to try to provide the animal with better bedding. It’s an awkward situation as one doesn’t want to upset the neighbour.

For most of the week we have been bathed in gentle sunshine, with barely a zephyr to rustle the branches. Such times as we have not been walking the dogs, clearing the undergrowth, cutting back the trees or burning off the prunings, we have spent thinking about the possibilities for next May when our regular house-sitters will be coming down once again.

Jones has a wodge of travel cuttings whose suggestions we’ve been exploring. It’s strange that no matter what key words one types into the search engines, the same travel sites come up time and again.(Jones is a great taker of sky pictures - just in case you were wondering.)

POST SCRIPT: The pictures tell their own story

And the tractor still drove away, although not very far as the front right tyre
was a write-off.